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The north iron doors grind open onto a fifty-foot grotto. Three feet of cold black grease cover most of its floor. Five squat, flabby gloop guards wait ten feet inside, submerged to their eyes with spears level; Captain Gullian rises among them in tarnished scraps of finery. Five more groom the twelve-legged, wingless black dragon wallowing beyond. Tiered gnomish seating climbs the walls above the muck. Ruling: wading through the grease halves ground movement. It allows no running, charge, or fighting withdrawal without falling face-first. The grease will burn for three rounds if ignited; anything in the pool at the start of its turn takes 1d6 fire damage. Gullian draws himself up and glances back to make sure the dragon is watching. “Stop there. Names, purpose, and payment for the privilege of addressing Captain Gullian.” He holds his guards rather than attacking.

Coss does not step off the stone. He plants himself square in the iron doorway instead — shield up, shoulder to the left jamb, sword still low and unlifted, filling the gap with sixty pounds of secondhand plate. There is stone under his boots and there will go on being stone under his boots. The grease can wait for somebody else's boots. "Coss Braddock," he says. Flat, loud enough to carry fifty feet, no more. "Free company. Passing through, not addressing. And we don't pay tolls to men standing in a puddle." He tips his chin at the black pool without taking his eyes off Gullian. "Captain. Look at your floor. Three feet of lamp oil and ten of your own men standing in it up to the eyes, and a lizard behind them that has to sit in it too. One torch and this is a pyre with seating. I'm not walking into that, and if you're any kind of captain you'll not want it lit either. So here's the offer, and it's the whole of it: nobody comes through this door, nobody goes through that one, and we go find another corridor." To the company, over his shoulder, same flat voice, no heat in it: "Nobody wades. Not one step. Anything that wants us has to come out of the muck and through me, one at a time, in a four-foot doorway — that's the only shape of this fight we win. Verity, if there's talking to be done, do it from behind my shoulder. Damaris, keep your hands off the tinder box until I say, and then don't be within thirty feet of it." He does not swing. He holds the door, and he watches the dragon's eyes rather than Gullian's, because Gullian is not the thing in the room that matters.

Reaction roll: 2 — hostile. Coss holds the dry threshold without attacking. At “lizard,” Sootmurk’s attendants freeze. The dragon lowers her chin into the grease and turns one lidless eye away, leaving Gullian to answer the insult. Gullian’s puffed posture collapses into naked fury; the five doorway spears rise. The offer of peaceful withdrawal is refused.

Damaris does not step off the stone either. She takes one pace forward so her shoulder is behind Coss's right pauldron, close enough that the plate is between her and the spears, and she does not touch the tinder box, and she says so out loud so that he can hear it and stop worrying about her hands. "Not the tinder. My hands are on the book." The wine list is folded in her sleeve with four numbers on the back of it and none of them is *five spears in a doorway*, so she spends the spell she has been carrying since the crossroads on the thing it is actually for. **Action: cast** ***sleep***. Centred on the five doorway guards — gloops 1 through 5, the ones submerged to the eyes with spears up ten feet inside — and pulled back toward the doorway to take in Captain Gullian if he falls inside the area. Cast from the dry threshold, behind Coss's shoulder; I do not enter the grease. The gestures are small and unlovely — two fingers turned over as though closing a ledger, and a word that is mostly breath. Nine syllables. She has never needed more. "Coss. They're standing in three feet of oil with their mouths at the waterline. If they go down, they go *under*. That's the whole of it — I don't need the pool lit and I'd rather nobody ever lit it." To the rest of the company, flat, the way she said the eight words to Verity once: *it will do nothing to the dragon.* Sootmurk is beyond the spell and beyond the wine list both. But five spears out of a four-foot doorway is five spears Coss does not have to eat, and Damaris has exactly one more spell after this one, and it is a single missile, and she intends to be standing on stone when she spends it. She backs her heel against the iron jamb and waits to see what floats.

Sleep affects 10 HD for 12 turns. There is no saving throw. Gloop guards 1–5 and Captain Gullian all go slack; six spears clatter against stone or vanish beneath the surface, and all six bodies sink into the grease. Slow bubbles continue to rise: these creatures live submerged here, so immersion does not drown them. They remain alive, helpless, and magically asleep. Damaris remains dry behind Coss; Sleep is spent.

Gloop guard 1 remains submerged, helpless, and asleep. It takes no action.

Gloop guard 10 dives and swims through the grease to Gullian. It hooks claws beneath the captain’s jaw and slaps him awake. Gullian coughs up black muck, alive and furious, but his round-one turn has already passed. Guard 10 spends its action waking him.

Gloop guard 2 remains submerged, helpless, and asleep. It takes no action.

Gloop guard 3 remains submerged, helpless, and asleep. It takes no action.

Gloop guard 4 remains submerged, helpless, and asleep. It takes no action.

Gloop guard 5 remains submerged, helpless, and asleep. It takes no action.

Gloop guard 6 swims to the doorway cluster and hauls guard 1 partly above the surface. A hard slap wakes guard 1, which has already lost its turn this round. Guard 6 spends its action waking it.

Gloop guard 7 reaches the cluster and slaps guard 2 awake. Guard 2 has already lost its turn this round. Guard 7 spends its action waking it.

Gloop guard 8 swims in and slaps guard 3 awake. Guard 3 has already lost its turn this round. Guard 8 spends its action waking it.

Gloop guard 9 reaches the cluster and slaps guard 4 awake. Guard 4 has already lost its turn this round. Guard 9 spends its action waking it. Guard 5 remains asleep beneath the grease.

Lammet has been on one knee at the left jamb since the doors ground open, two fingers in the black where it laps the threshold stone, rubbing it against his thumb. "Damaris. It's the same. It's the ruts." He says it quietly, and only once, because Coss is holding a door and Coss does not need a lecture. But he wants it said out loud in front of witnesses that the stuff in the road two days west and the stuff on this floor are one substance, and that neither of them dries, and that whatever it is, *she* is lying in it up to her chin like it's a bath. Then he wipes his fingers on his thigh — it doesn't wipe off — and stands up out of the way of Coss's shield arm. **I do not wade.** Not one step. He hooks a stone out of the pouch by feel and pays out the sling, standing on dry stone half a pace behind Coss's left pauldron, where he can see over the shield rim and past the jamb without crowding the sword arm. He does not shoot at the nine flabby things slapping each other awake in the muck. There's no arithmetic in that. He picks the one in the tarnished finery, the one who wanted names, purpose, and payment, the one who is still coughing black out of his lungs and can't have got his breath back yet. "Captain," he says, conversational, and the sling goes round twice. **Action: sling at Captain Gullian.** Missile from the dry threshold. DEX 16, so add the bonus if the table wants it. Under his breath, to nobody, in the flat voice men use for the arithmetic they'd rather not say aloud: "Ten of them and one of you, Captain, and they had to fish *you* out first. Everyone in this room knows what you're for."

Lammet Voss hits Captain Gullian for 2

The stone goes out flat and cracks off the Captain somewhere above the waterline. Not a killing hit — a stone is a stone, and Lammet is not going to pretend otherwise — but Gullian is now a man in wet finery who has been slept, fished out, and struck by the smallest person in the doorway, in front of his ten and in front of her. "That's names and purpose," Lammet says. "Payment's in transit." He's already got the next stone in his palm and he doesn't come off the dry stone to get it. Two things for the company, quick, while there's still a doorway between us and them: Verity — the captain's the hinge. They spent four turns of their round fishing him out and slapping their own awake instead of coming at Coss. That's not discipline, that's a chain of command with one link in it. He goes down or he breaks, and the other ten have to decide whether they love him enough to keep standing in a doorway. Put your steel in *him*, not in the flabby ones. Una — nobody lights this pool. Not for advantage, not for spite, not last. There's dry stone under us and three feet of the same black that's in the road ruts west of here in front of us, and I'd like somebody in this company to survive long enough to tell the duke's clerk what it was. Written down. In a box. He does not look at the dragon. He is very deliberately not looking at the dragon.

Lammet’s comparison holds: the residue at the threshold has the same cold feel, smell, and refusal to dry as the grease in the road ruts. His sling roll of 16 hits AC 6 for 2 damage, already applied; Gullian drops to 10/12 hp as the stone cracks against his cheek. He reels in the muck, stripped of dignity but still fighting.

Sootmurk does not attack in round one. One immense eye opens fully, not on Lammet but on Gullian. Her laughter is a slow vibration through the grease. “Names, purpose, payment,” she murmurs. “Oh, Gullian. They have appraised you.” She settles her chin on crossed foreclaws and watches, openly entertained. No breath is being readied.

Una is the last one on the stone and she has counted it already, because counting is what she does while other people talk. Two spells. One is Cure Light Wounds and it is worth about four or five wounds of a person, and there are four people in front of her, and nobody in this room is bleeding yet. So it stays in her hands. The other is Protection from Evil and it protects exactly one body — hers — which is the least useful body on this threshold, and she is not going to spend a morning's memorisation making the woman at the back marginally harder to hit. It stays too. **I do not wade. I do not cast. Action: sling at Captain Gullian.** From dry stone, at Coss's right, well clear of the sword arm and clear of Damaris. She sets her shield against the jamb, gets the holy symbol out of the way inside her collar, and pays out the sling without hurry, the way she used to pitch stones off the Wale curtain wall at nothing in particular for nine years. "Lammet. Nobody lights it. That's not a maybe and it's not a last resort — put it in the box in whatever hand you like, and put my name under it." Then, because it needs saying and Coss will not say it: "Coss. You hold that door and you don't step off the stone for anything. Not for Verity, not for me. If someone goes down out past your shield they are gone and I will not be able to get to them, so nobody goes out past your shield. Verity, the captain — Lammet has the shape of it. They spent nine actions on him. Break the hinge and the door swings." She looses. Her arithmetic on the matter is short and she keeps it behind her teeth: *five in a corridor, two spells, and one of the two is for whoever bleeds first. Please be somebody I can reach.*

Una Ferris misses Captain Gullian

The stone goes high and wide and takes a chip out of the tiered gnomish seating twenty feet up the far wall, and the crack of it comes back off the stone louder than the shot deserved. Una watches it go without any expression at all. She has never once in her life pretended a miss was anything else. "Wide," she says, for the record, because someone in this company keeps the record and it is her. Another stone out of the pouch, seated in the pocket, and her heel does not move off the threshold. "Still nobody bleeding. Verity — go."

Una’s sling roll is a natural 1 and misses Gullian. The stone clips the iron door and disappears into the grease. Una remains on dry stone; both cleric spells remain memorised.

Una’s follow-up changes no resolved result; the referee’s miss trajectory stands. It is Verity’s turn, and Verity has not acted, so initiative does not advance.

Verity does not step off the stone. She has said the plan out loud twice so it would stop sounding clever to her, and this is the plan: doors, a chokepoint, and them coming to us one at a time. Nothing has changed except that the chokepoint is working. So she comes up on Coss's right shoulder, inside the jamb, second rank — close enough that anything that gets past his shield rim eats her sword before it eats him, far enough that she is not fouling his arm. "Coss. You're the door. I'm the bar behind it. You don't step off and neither do I." Then she looks at the man in the wet finery, ten feet out, and does the arithmetic she does not usually say aloud, and this once says it, because it is a company matter and the company should hear it: "Ten of them spent nine actions fishing one of him out of a puddle. That's not ten enemies. That's one enemy and nine hands. Lammet has it right." She sets her shield, shifts the sword to her left hand for a moment, and takes the spear off her back. Six feet of ash, one of the two things she owns that she paid for herself. She is throwing it into three feet of grease she will never get it back out of, and she knows the price of it to the copper, and she throws it anyway. **Action: throw the spear at Captain Gullian.** From dry stone at Coss's right shoulder, inside the threshold. I do not wade, I do not lean out past the shield rim, and I do not go in after the spear afterward — it is spent, it is the chest's loss, and I'll write it on the tablet myself. "Captain Gullian," she says, level, the way she reads a contract aloud before she signs it. "Verity Shrike, Shrike Company, under written contract to the duke. The offer at the door was real and you refused it in front of your own men. That's on the record." And then she puts the ash in.

Verity Shrike misses Captain Gullian

Verity’s spear roll is a natural 1 and misses Gullian. The shaft strikes the grease flat, slews sideways, and sinks out of sight; the spear is spent unless the pool is later dredged. Verity remains on dry stone behind Coss. Gullian stays at 10/12 hp.

The ash goes out and the ash goes wrong. She has thrown a spear perhaps four hundred times in six years and this is one of the bad ones — she knows it the instant it leaves her hand, the way you know a signature is wrong before the ink dries. It goes a foot over Gullian's shoulder, hangs a moment, and slides into the black without so much as a splash. The grease takes it the way it takes everything. No spear. No sound. Nothing to go back for. "Wide," Verity says. Flat. Una's word, and she uses it deliberately, because Una said it first and said it honestly and this company keeps its record straight or it keeps nothing. She takes the sword back into her right hand and settles her shield against Coss's plate, and she does not step off the stone to chase it. "One spear, six feet of ash, four gold and eight," she says, for the tablet, out loud so five people hear the figure and nobody has to wonder later what she wrote. "Company chest, not my share. I'll enter it tonight." Then, still level, to the man in the wet finery who is now watching a woman in the doorway who has thrown her spear away for nothing: "That was the last thing I'm sending you, Captain. Everything after this you have to come and get, in a four-foot door, one at a time, past sixty pounds of plate. You had the offer. Nobody comes through, nobody goes through. It's still on the table and it will still be on the table in six rounds, and every round it sits there costs you a man and costs me nothing." To the company, quiet, sword up, feet on stone: "Hold the shape. Lammet, Una, keep the stones on the captain. Damaris, you're behind me and you stay behind me and your last spell is for whatever gets a hand on the jamb, not for the water. Nobody lights the pool — that's three of us on the record now, put my name under Una's, Lammet. And if he *does* break and they come out of it one at a time — that's the fight we win. Let them come."

Captain Gullian misses Coss Braddock

Gullian cannot accept retreat after Sootmurk’s mockery. He dives, surfaces ten feet out, and launches spear-first at Coss. Captain’s +2 and hopping +1 cannot rescue a natural 1: the spear skates off the shield, and Gullian slams into sixty pounds of plate before tumbling back into the grease. He deals no damage and does not cross the threshold.

Gullian comes off the grease spear-first and hits sixty pounds of secondhand plate, and Coss does not move. He does not brace, he does not lean, he does not need to. The spear-head skates up the shield face and screams off the door jamb, and the Captain of the Puddle folds against Coss's chest like a wet coat off a hook, and Coss's shield arm gives him one short shove — not a step, a shove, weight from the hips, boots still on stone — and puts him back where he came from. The moment the man is at arm's length in the black at the lip of the threshold, Coss's sword comes up for the first time since the doors opened. "That's the fourth thing you've done wrong," he says. Flat. No heat. He has the voice of a man reading a bill. "You held your men to make a speech. You got slept. You got fished. And now you came at a door on your own, out of your own oil, with ten of yours behind you doing nothing at all." **Action: sword at Captain Gullian.** He is at the threshold lip within reach of my arm — he came to me. I do not step off the stone. Not one boot in the grease, not to press him, not to finish him if he goes down out there. Shield stays square in the four-foot gap; if I have to choose between the swing and the doorway, the doorway wins. Over his shoulder, to the company, same flat voice, without turning his head: "Nobody wades. Still nobody wades. That's the whole plan and it is working — he came out and he came to us and he got nothing, and that is what the next nine get too if they've the stomach. Verity, hold my right. Damaris, hands on the book, not the tinder. Una, don't spend anything; nobody's bleeding yet and I intend to keep the bleeding on this side of the jamb where you can reach it. And put my name under Una's and Lammet's and Verity's. Nobody lights the pool. Not for advantage. If it goes up, it goes up with ten of them in it and four of us in a doorway with iron doors behind us and one corridor out, and I have seen what a corridor full of fire does to a company. Four of eleven walked out at Fenn and I was not one of them." He watches the dragon, not the captain, because the captain is only a man in wet finery and the dragon is the thing in the room that matters, and she is still laughing.

Coss Braddock hits Captain Gullian for 1

Coss rolls 18 and hits Gullian for 1 damage, already applied. The sword opens Gullian’s upper arm as Coss keeps both boots on stone and his shield square in the doorway. Gullian recoils into the grease at 9/12 hp; he is wounded but has not broken.

The swing is good and the edge is bad. Coss puts the sword in from the shoulder, no flourish, the short chopping stroke he was taught for exactly this — a man at arm's length in a doorway, no room to draw back — and it goes where he sent it, in under the tarnished finery at the collarbone. And it turns on something. A gorget, a buckle, a bone that flabby things have where men don't; whatever it is, the blade skids and comes away with a hand's width of black-red on it and not much else. *One.* He counts it and doesn't say it. Four years he has been telling himself the sword is fine and it is, and it is also a secondhand sword that has been rebuilt about as often as the pauldron, and one day he'll spend the winter money on a new one and lie about why. "Hm," Coss says. That's all. He resets — shield square in the gap, boots on the same two flagstones they have been on since the doors ground open, sword back down to low guard where it can come up again without telegraphing. "You're bleeding, Captain," he says, in the flat bill-reading voice. "That's the account so far: a stone in the cheek and a cut at the neck, and you have taken nothing off any of us. Nobody's even breathing hard. The offer's still there and it doesn't expire — nobody comes through, nobody goes through, and you go back to your wallow and tell her you saw us off. I'll not contradict you. I'll be four corridors away. Or come again. There's stone under my boots and there'll go on being stone under my boots, and every time you come out of that oil you come out alone." He does not lean out after him. He does not look at the ten. He watches Sootmurk's eye, because that is the only thing in this grotto that could end the company in a single round, and she is still amused, and amused is the best weather they are going to get.

Coss’s renewed withdrawal offer remains open, but Gullian has not accepted it. This follow-up adds no new action. It is Damaris’s turn, and she has not acted, so initiative does not advance.

Damaris has been doing the arithmetic since the stone cracked off his cheek, and she does it out loud now, because four people in this doorway have told her when to spend her last spell and none of them knows what it is worth. "Coss. Verity. Listen to the numbers before you tell me to keep it." She holds up two fingers, ink-stained, and does not step off the stone. "Magic missile at my level is *two* darts, not one. Two to six each. Four at worst, fourteen at best, nine in the middle of the run — and it does not miss and he does not get a save. That is the whole of what I have. Lammet took two off him, Coss took one. He is a man with nine left in him, standing in his own oil, ten feet out, wounded, in front of *her*." She glances once at Sootmurk — at the crossed foreclaws and the open lidless eye and the slow laughter going through three feet of grease — and then back at the man in the wet finery, because the dragon is not the target and never was. "If I hold this for a hand on the jamb, I spend nine damage on a flabby thing worth four, and the hinge stays in the water shouting. If I spend it now, one throw of the dice in two says the captain does not come up again, and the other nine have to decide, in front of a dragon who has already laughed at him, whether they love him enough to walk into a four-foot door one at a time." **Action: cast *magic missile*.** Target Captain Gullian, and only Captain Gullian. Two missiles, both into him. Cast from the dry threshold behind Coss's right pauldron with my heel against the iron jamb — I do not wade, I do not lean past the shield rim, I do not touch the tinder box, and nothing I am doing puts a spark anywhere near this pool. The gestures are small and unlovely: the ledger-closing turn of two fingers again, and a word that is mostly breath, and two points of hard light coming off her knuckles the colour of a lamp-wick going out. "Captain Gullian," she says, and it is not a taunt, it is a citation. "Damaris Pyke. Nine, twelve, six, and a company — that's the four accounts I have of dragons dying, and in three of them the man who struck the blow has a name. You had a name and a doorway and an offer, and you spent your round on a speech." The light goes. And afterward, flat, so the company hears the cost the same round it hears the benefit, the way Verity says the price of a spear: "That's the book empty. Nothing memorised, nothing left but the reading. I am now a woman with a dagger and eight hit points standing behind sixty pounds of plate, and I intend to stay exactly there. Una, if anyone bleeds it will not be me, because I am not going to be reachable by anything that isn't through Coss first. Nobody lights the pool — put my name under Coss's. That's five of us and it's unanimous, and I'm the one who'd have had to light it, so mine's the name that matters on that line."

something takes 4 from Captain Gullian.

Rules correction: under OSE, a 3rd-level magic-user’s Magic Missile creates one dart, not two. It creates two additional darts per five full levels; the first increase is to three darts at 6th level. The single dart hits Gullian automatically for 1d6+1 = 4 damage. Hard light punches into his chest and drives him half under the grease; he resurfaces at 5/12 hp, badly wounded but alive. Nothing ignites. Magic Missile is spent, leaving Damaris with no memorised spells.

gloop guard 1 misses Coss Braddock

gloop guard 1 hits Coss Braddock for 3

something takes 1 from Coss Braddock.

Gloop guard 1 bursts from the grease and hops straight onto Coss. The hopping attack gains +1 to hit and damage. Its first claw rolls 9 and scrapes harmlessly across the shield; the second rolls 19, hooks beneath a plate seam, and tears for 3+1 = 4 damage, already applied. Coss drops to 11/15 hp but keeps the threshold blocked. The guard hangs at the doorway lip against his shield and has not passed him.

Guard 10 cannot reach Coss through guard 1’s body at the narrow threshold. It dives instead, finds guard 5 still drifting asleep beneath the grease, and claws it awake. Guard 5 sputters to awareness but has not yet taken its round-two turn. Guard 10 spends its action.

Guard 2 cannot crowd past guard 1 in the four-foot doorway. It dives beside the threshold, recovers the spear it dropped under Damaris’s Sleep spell, and rises five feet back with the weapon levelled. Recovering and readying it takes the guard’s action.

Guard 3 also finds guard 1 filling the doorway. It dives, retrieves its dropped spear from the grease, and surfaces beside guard 2 five feet back. Recovering and readying the weapon takes its action.

Guard 4 dives for its own dropped spear and surfaces beside guards 2 and 3, five feet behind the blocked doorway. Recovering and readying the weapon takes its action.

Newly awakened guard 5 dives for the spear it dropped when Sleep took it. It recovers the weapon and rises behind guards 2–4, spending its action. All five former sleepers are now awake.

gloop guard 6 misses Coss Braddock

Guard 6 throws its spear at Coss through the doorway, but guard 1’s body and the iron jamb give Coss cover: −2 to the attack, requiring 19. The roll is 12. The spear strikes the jamb and falls into the grease; Coss takes no damage.

gloop guard 7 misses Coss Braddock

Guard 7 hurls its spear through the same cluttered line at Coss. With −2 for cover it needs 19 and rolls 2. The cast goes nowhere near him and vanishes into the grease.

gloop guard 8 hits Coss Braddock for 3

Guard 8 throws through the same covered line. The −2 cover makes 19 necessary; it rolls exactly 19 and hits Coss for 3 damage, already applied. The spear punches through the gap above guard 1’s shoulder and bites into Coss’s side. Coss falls to 8/15 hp but still holds the doorway.

gloop guard 9 misses Coss Braddock

Guard 9 throws its spear at Coss through guard 1 and the jamb. With −2 cover it needs 19 and rolls 12. The spear glances off Coss’s shield and drops into the grease; no damage.

Lammet has been counting too, and his count is shorter than Damaris's. *Five.* The captain came up out of the black with a hole in his chest that a light punched and he came up at five. He has been stoned, cut, and burned in front of ten of his own and in front of her, and he has taken nothing off anybody. That is a man three points from being a story the other ten tell each other for the rest of their wet lives. **Action: sling at Captain Gullian.** Same spot, same dry stone, second rank at Una's shoulder — I do not wade, I do not lean past Coss's shield rim, and I hold the shot until the line is clear of Coss's helmet and clear of the thing hanging on his shield. If it isn't clear, it goes into the water instead of into him, and I'll say so. He does not hurry it. He drops the stone into the pocket, takes the two turns of cord he always takes, and thinks the thing he does not say: *four hundred throws and the spear was wide, nine years off the Wale wall and the stone was wide, and I hit with the first thing I put in the air in this room.* He is not proud of noticing it. He notices it anyway, and files it where he files the other things nobody has ever mentioned to him. Three things while the cord comes round, fast, because they are worth more than the shot: "Coss. You're at half. That's not a scold, that's a number, and it's the number that matters in this room — you are the plan, and the plan is a man with eight left in him. Una: your Cure is Coss's. Not mine, not Damaris's, not whoever's it *should* be by fairness. Spend it on the door *before* the door falls over, because a cure into a standing man is fifteen more hit points of doorway and a cure into a man on the flagstones is a body you can talk to. That's my vote and it's the only vote I've got. Verity. They've stopped coming. Look at their round: one thing hopped, one thing woke another, and four of them went *diving for dropped spears*. That's not an assault, that's ten wet creatures tidying up. They will throw from five feet back all night, and the cover line is the only reason Coss isn't down — one in twenty gets through. We win a war of one-in-twenty. Nobody gives them a better angle by stepping out to be a hero. And the spears keep landing in the grease at our lip. Two feet of black at the threshold, not three. When this is over, I'll have my arm in it up to the shoulder for six feet of ash with your name on it, and I'll not be charging the chest for the swim. Four gold and eight, off the tablet." Then, to the man in the wet finery, and he keeps it level, because Verity reads contracts aloud and Coss reads bills and Lammet has decided this is how his company talks: "Captain Gullian. Lammet Voss. Company thief. Fourteen months." He says it out loud, all of it, first time in this room. "Nobody in here has to remember it. But she's watching, and she'll remember whatever gets written, so — Voss. Two Ss. The offer's still open and the door's still four feet wide." The stone goes. He still does not look at the dragon.

Lammet Voss misses Captain Gullian

Wide. Not wide like Una's, which went twenty feet up a wall and announced itself. This one goes low — a foot under the shoulder, into the black beside him, and the grease takes it without a splash the same way it took Verity's ash and four gloop spears and everything else this room has ever swallowed. "Wide," Lammet says, because that's the word now and three of them have used it and nobody in this company gilds a miss. "Low and left. He's still up." He is already paying out the cord again. What he does not say, and will not, is the shape the round has taken: two hits out of seven things put into the air by five people, and the captain is at five and standing, and the man holding the door is at eight. Those two numbers are walking toward each other and only one of them has a cleric behind it. "Una — that's my vote said and I'll not say it twice. Coss, first. Before, not after." He rolls the next stone in his fingers, and his heel is where it has been since the doors ground open: dry stone, two feet back of the jamb, out of the sword arm, out of the water.

Lammet’s DEX 16 grants +2 to the missile attack, but Coss and guard 1 impose −2 cover; the modifiers cancel. His sling roll is 10 against AC 6, needing 13, and misses. The stone passes through the brief opening but strikes grease beside Gullian. Lammet remains dry; Gullian stays at 5/12 hp.

Sootmurk finally moves. She swims to the north-door line, ten feet from the threshold, forcing Gullian and the spear rank aside. Then all twelve legs lock beneath her and she rears. Black grease sheets from her chest; the grotto turns hot, and the smell changes from cold tallow to scorched fat. “Four accounts, little scholar?” she says to Damaris. “Begin the fifth.” She spends this turn repositioning and drawing breath. This is the warning: on Sootmurk’s next turn she will breathe boiling grease through the north doorway and down the passage. Anyone who uses a turn before then to move fully behind either north-passage wall will be outside the cone. The threshold and the straight line behind Coss will not be safe. No breath is spent this turn.

Una has been keeping the number in her head since the doors ground open, and now the number changes, so she says the new one. "Everybody stop talking about the door. The door is finished." She says it flat, the way she reads a debit. No heat, no hurry, and her heel comes off the threshold for the first time this fight — backwards. **Action: move. Una steps back from the threshold and goes fully behind the west wall of the north passage, out of the line of the doorway, flat to the stone with her shoulder against it and her mace out of the loop.** Not one boot in the grease, and not one inch of me in the cone. I am not casting this round. Both spells stay memorised — Cure Light Wounds and Protection from Evil, unspent, and I want that on the record in the same round I decline to spend them. Then, because she keeps the record and the record is the only thing she has ever been good at: "Lammet, you asked for the Cure on Coss before he falls over, and you were right an hour ago and you are wrong now. Here is the arithmetic and it is the plainest arithmetic I have done in three years. My Cure is worth two to seven hit points. One casting. Nothing else in the book. What she is drawing breath for is worth every hit point she has, and she has more than all five of us laid end to end. There is no number I can put into Coss that makes standing in that doorway survivable. If I pour my one spell into a man in the cone, I have spent the whole morning's mercy on a corpse that gets a fraction of a second longer to be upright. I will not do it. Not out of thrift. Because it does not work. *Get out of the cone, then bleed, and then I can pay for the bleeding.*" She does not look round the corner at the dragon. She has been told what the cone is and she believes it and there is nothing to see that changes it. "Coss — the order of turns is the whole of it, so hear it once. She goes before me and before Verity next round. She goes *after* you, and after Damaris, and after Lammet. That means you three have a turn in hand and Verity and I do not, which is why I am behind this wall now and Verity should be behind the other one before she says another word. Coss. You have a turn before she breathes. Spend it coming backwards behind the stone — not sideways, not standing there deciding, *behind the wall* — and if there is a leaf of that iron door you can swing across the gap on your way, swing it, because iron does not care how hot fat is. If it comes to choosing, the wall, not the door. Sixty pounds of plate will hold heat against your skin and cook you inside it and I have seen exactly that at Fenn's kind of fire and there is no bandage for it. Damaris, you have nothing memorised and eight hit points and a turn. Use the turn on the wall. Not the tinder, not the book, the wall. Lammet, a stone into the water is worth nothing against a breath. Wall. Nobody lights the pool — five names, and now she may light it herself, and that is not our sin and I will write it that way." And then, quietly, to the stone in front of her face, not for the company: "Two spells and five people. It has never once come out comfortable." She sets her back against the wall, mace low, and waits to find out who was listening — because the whole of her work happens *after* the fire, on whoever is still breathing, and she wants there to be four of them.

Una withdraws fully behind the west wall of the north passage. She is outside Sootmurk’s prepared cone and cannot see the grotto from there. Cure Light Wounds and Protection from Evil both remain memorised and unspent.

Verity steps off the stone. Backwards. It is the first order she has given herself in this fight that contradicts the plan she said out loud twice, and she says so, because a captain who will not name the correction is a captain who is protecting her own cleverness instead of her company. **Action: move. Verity withdraws fully behind the east wall of the north passage — off the threshold, out of the doorway line, flat to the stone with her shoulder against it, sword in hand, shield square across the corridor mouth on my side.** Not one boot in the grease, not one inch of me in the cone, and I am not leaning out to look. I do not attack this round. "Una's right and I'm wrong, and everybody hears me say it once so nobody has to wonder later. The plan was doors and a chokepoint, and it *was* working — nine of their ten actions two rounds running, and Coss at eight for it. Then the shape changed. A four-foot door is the best thing in the world against ten things that have to come through it one at a time, and it is the *worst* thing in the world against something that only needs the door to point where it's already pointing. She lined herself up on the north door and drew breath. That means the doorway stopped being our chokepoint the moment she put her chest behind it. It's hers now. You don't hold a door that the enemy is using as a funnel." She has her back on stone and her eyes on the corner she cannot see round, and she keeps her voice at reading-a-contract level, because five people need to hear the order and not the fear in it. "Coss. Turn order, and it's the only number that matters in the next thirty seconds. She goes after you and before me. You have a turn in hand and I do not — that's why I'm behind the wall already and you're still in the jamb. **Spend it coming backwards.** Not the shove, not one more swing at the thing hanging on your shield, not the flourish. Backwards, behind stone, this wall or the west one, and if a leaf of that iron swings on your way, swing it and keep walking. That's your captain telling you and it's not a request. You have said all fight that if you had to choose between the swing and the doorway, the doorway wins. Now choose between the doorway and the man in it. **You are worth more than the doorway.** Sixty pounds of plate in a corridor full of boiling fat is a pot, and I have four gold and eight on a tablet for a spear and no figure I can write for you. Damaris — wall. You have nothing in the book and eight hit points and a turn; the turn is worth exactly one thing. Lammet — wall, and don't you dare put a stone in the air first. And when the fire's gone through: the gloops still cannot get out of that pool without coming into a corridor, one at a time, at people standing on dry stone behind two corners. That fight we still win. We just win it four feet further back and with her breath spent." Then, and she makes herself say this part while there is still a witness to say it in front of, because it is a company matter and the company keeps the record or keeps nothing: "Five names on the line and nobody lit the pool. Not one of us. If it goes up now, it goes up because *she* lit her own floor with ten of her own in it, and that is what I will tell the duke's clerk and what I will read aloud before I sign it. Lammet — that goes in the box in whatever hand you like. Nobody comes out past the corners after me. If I'm on the wrong side of the fire, I'm on the wrong side of the fire. Una's work happens after." She sets her shoulder to the stone, sword low, shield across the gap, and does not look at the dragon — and finds, with some irritation, that she is doing the arithmetic anyway: *nine barrels valued at eighty sold for thirty-one, and every account of a dragon dying has more names in it than I have.* She is not going to be the fifth account. Not today, not in a doorway she chose herself. "Coss. *Backwards.* Now."

Verity withdraws fully behind the east wall of the north passage. She is outside Sootmurk’s prepared cone, remains on dry stone, and makes no attack.

Captain Gullian checks morale at 5/12 hp: 2d6 = 8 against morale 6, failure. He breaks. Rather than approach the doorway again, he dives behind Sootmurk and clings beneath her rear legs, abandoning his guards and pleading that he drew the intruders into her aim. He makes no attack and is no longer near the threshold.

Coss goes backwards. He has said *go home* about a barrow and a bridge and he was right about the bridge, and he was going to say it about Sootmurk on the fourth day, in front of everyone, in one flat sentence. It turns out to be the third day and the sentence is shorter than he planned. "Aye. Backwards." That's all the argument there is. Verity said it and Una said it first and the arithmetic is not complicated: a four-foot door is worth everything against ten things that have to come through it one at a time, and it is worth nothing at all against a thing that only needs the door to point where it's already pointing. She put her chest on the north line and drew breath. The door isn't ours any more. You don't hold a funnel for the enemy. **Action: move. Coss withdraws from the threshold — straight back off the two flagstones, out of the doorway line, and fully behind the west wall of the north passage, flat to the stone at Una's shoulder, shield across the corridor mouth on that side.** Not one boot in the grease, not one inch of me left in the cone, and I do not lean out to look. **I make no attack this round.** The thing hanging on my shield gets the shield and nothing else — one shove off the boss as I go, weight from the hips, and if it wants to follow me it can follow me round a corner into a corridor where it will be one gloop meeting sixty pounds of plate on dry stone, which is the trade I have wanted all morning. On the way past the jamb, my left heel goes into the iron leaf to swing it across the gap. **That is second priority and only second** — if the referee rules the leaf can't be moved without spending my move, the leaf stays where it is and I keep walking. The wall beats the door. Una's right about the plate: sixty pounds of steel in a corridor full of boiling fat is a cooking pot with a man in it, and there is no bandage for that. I've smelled it. Flat, moving, over the pauldron, in the voice he uses for bills: "Damaris — east wall, Verity's side, now, and nothing else. No book, no tinder, no looking. Lammet — wall. A stone in the water buys nothing. Una. Hold the Cure. You were right and Lammet was wrong and I'd have taken it if you'd offered, so it's as well you didn't. Two to seven into a man standing in a cone is money in a fire. Get me out first, then let me bleed, then pay for the bleeding — that's your own line and it's the correct one. Verity. I'm off the stone because you told me to be, and for the record I'd have gone anyway. Say it once and we'll not have it again." And then, because it needs saying while there are five of them to hear it and not four: "That's the whole shape of what's next. The fire goes down a corridor with nobody in it. Then ten wet things have to leave a pool and come at two corners, one at a time, at four people on dry stone — and I'm the first corner. Same fight we were winning, four feet further back, with her breath spent and nothing of ours in the pot. Five names on that line and nobody lit the pool. She lights her own floor with ten of her own standing in it. Write it exactly that way." He puts his back on the stone, sword low, shield square across the gap, and he does not look round the corner at the dragon. He counts instead — eleven minutes to get into the plate, four of eleven walked out at Fenn, and this time he is behind the wall before the fire and not under it. "Nobody comes out past me until she's spent."

Coss makes a fighting withdrawal on dry stone, moving backward at half speed while keeping his shield toward guard 1. The shove breaks the gloop’s grip and drops it back into the grease at the doorway lip; it takes no damage. Coss reaches Una’s side fully behind the west passage wall and is outside Sootmurk’s prepared cone. The large iron leaf is too heavy to kick shut while withdrawing, so it remains open. Coss makes no attack and remains at 8/15 hp.

Damaris does not argue and does not spend the turn talking first. She has been the one saying the numbers all morning and the number here has one digit in it. **Action: move. Damaris withdraws from the threshold — straight back off the dry stone, out of the doorway line, and fully behind the *east* wall of the north passage, flat to the stone at Verity's shoulder, shield side of nothing, dagger still in the sheath.** Not one boot in the grease, not one inch of me in the cone, and I do not lean out to look. **No spell** — there is nothing in the book to cast; nothing memorised, nothing left but the reading. **No tinder.** I do not touch the tinder box this round or any round. She goes east because Coss and Una went west, and if the fire finds a way round one corner it will not find its way round two, and the book should not be in the same corridor as the plate. Because that is the other arithmetic, and she does it while she moves and says it out loud once, flat, so nobody has to guess what she is carrying: "The book goes under my arm, oiled wrap, on the far side of my body from the door. One copy. Thirty gold of vellum and five weeks of my hands, and it is the only reason I am worth bringing. If it burns, I am a woman with a dagger and eight hit points, and the company loses sleep and magic missile for good, not for a night. So the book gets the wall too." She sets her back to the stone, and she says the rest of it to the corner she is not looking round, because someone should get it into the air before the fire does. "For the record, and Lammet can copy it in whatever hand he likes: five names on the line that nobody lights the pool, and mine is on it, and I am the one who could have. I had a candle and six more and a dry threshold and three feet of grease at ten feet, and I did not, and I will not. She is going to light her own floor with ten of her own standing in it, and Gullian under her back legs pleading that he drew us into her aim. That is the fifth account and it is not going to have our names in the wrong column." And then, quieter, to Verity, at reading-a-contract level: "She said *begin the fifth*. Nine, twelve, six, and a company — that's what the four accounts cost. She thinks I'm writing about her. I'm writing about *us*, and the entry for this room so far reads: two rounds, nine of their ten actions spent on a door, seven hit points off Coss, one spell each from me, and nothing of ours in the pot. That is a room we were winning until the room changed shape. It changed shape. We are four feet further back and she is about to spend the only thing she has that we cannot answer, into an empty corridor. After the fire: ten wet things that still have to leave a pool and come at two corners one at a time, and a breath that is spent. That fight is arithmetic again, and I am better at arithmetic than I am at being brave. I have nothing memorised, Verity. Say the word and I will hold this corner with a dagger, and I will be worth about as much as the dagger, and I would rather you knew the figure than guessed it."

Damaris withdraws across dry stone and reaches Verity fully behind the east passage wall. She and her wrapped spellbook are outside Sootmurk’s prepared cone; she makes no attack and remains at 8/8 hp with no memorised spells. Inventory note: Damaris carries no tinder box; Coss’s tinder box remains with him.

Guard 1 does not pursue onto dry stone beneath Sootmurk’s gathered breath. It sinks at the doorway lip, recovers its dropped spear, and swims clear of the north-door line before surfacing with the weapon ready. Recovering and repositioning take its action; it makes no attack.

gloop guard 10 hits Lammet Voss for 3

Guard 10, already displaced beside Sootmurk’s breath line, hurls its spear at Lammet—the last figure still exposed in the straight passage. The iron jamb gives Lammet −2 cover, raising the required roll from 14 to 16. The guard rolls 17 and hits for 3 damage, already applied. The spear cuts into Lammet’s upper arm; he drops to 7/10 hp. Guard 10 remains in the pool outside the cone and is now unarmed.

gloop guard 2 misses Lammet Voss

Guard 2 throws its recovered spear at Lammet from beside Sootmurk’s breath line. The iron jamb again gives −2 cover, requiring 16; the guard rolls 8 and misses. The spear rings off the passage wall and falls onto the dry flagstones. Guard 2 remains in the pool and is now unarmed.

gloop guard 3 misses Lammet Voss

Guard 3 throws at Lammet through the same −2 cover. It rolls a natural 1; the spear clips the iron door edge and drops into the grease. Lammet takes no damage. Guard 3 remains in the pool and is now unarmed.

gloop guard 4 misses Lammet Voss

Guard 4 throws its spear at Lammet through the −2 cover of the jamb. It needs 16 and rolls 8. The spear strikes stone and skids onto the passage floor; Lammet takes no damage. Guard 4 remains in the pool and is now unarmed.

gloop guard 5 misses Lammet Voss

Guard 5 throws its recovered spear at Lammet through the jamb’s −2 cover. It needs 16 and rolls 6. The cast falls short into the grease; Lammet takes no damage. Guard 5 remains in the pool and is now unarmed.

Guard 6 dives for the spear it threw in round 2. It recovers the weapon from the grease and surfaces beside the doorway but clear of Sootmurk’s breath line. Recovering and readying the spear take its action; it makes no attack.

Guard 7 dives for the spear it threw in round 2, retrieves it from the grease, and surfaces clear of Sootmurk’s breath line with the weapon ready. Recovering and repositioning take its action; it makes no attack.

Guard 8’s own spear lies beyond the threshold after striking Coss, so it dives for guard 3’s lost spear instead. It retrieves the weapon from the grease and surfaces clear of Sootmurk’s breath line. Recovering and readying it take the guard’s action; it makes no attack.

Guard 9 dives for the spear it threw in round 2, recovers it from the grease, and surfaces outside Sootmurk’s breath line with the weapon ready. Recovering and repositioning take its action; it makes no attack.

Lammet is the last man in the straight line and he knows it, because four people have now said his name and the word *wall* in the same breath, and because a spear came out of that pool and found his arm. He looks at it once. Three off ten. Seven left. It is the first blood he has taken in fourteen months of working for this company and it happened while he was standing still doing the correct thing, which he files where he files everything else. **Action: move. Lammet withdraws from the passage — straight back off the dry stone, out of the doorway line, and fully behind the *west* wall of the north passage, flat to the stone at Coss's shoulder with Una behind him.** Not one boot in the grease, not one inch of me in the cone, and I do not lean out to look. **No attack. No stone in the air.** The sling goes into the belt with the pocket empty, so nobody has to wonder whether I was thinking about it. West, not east, and the reason is arithmetic and not sentiment: the book is east and the book should not share a corridor with anything, and Una is west and I am the only one of the five who is *carrying a wound*. Put the bleeding next to the bandages. Coss is the first corner; I stand behind the plate, which is the whole point of plate. Two spears are lying on dry flagstones in the passage where the gloops threw them short. **If one is on my line I scoop it as I go without a pause. That is second priority and only second** — if it costs me a step, a foot, or a heartbeat, it stays on the floor and I keep walking. Iron is four gold and eight. I am not. He says it flat, over his shoulder, moving: "Last man's off the line. Cone's empty. Nobody in the straight, nobody at the threshold, nobody looking round a corner to see if it's pretty. Una — you were right and I was wrong, and I said my vote out loud twice so I'll say the correction out loud once, at the same volume. *Cure into a man in a cone is money in a fire.* You held it and you were right to hold it and I want that in the record in my hand as well as yours: the cleric refused the thief and the thief was wrong. Now I'm behind the wall with three off me, and *now* it's worth something, and I'm still not asking. Coss first, then me, then whoever. You keep the order, not us. Verity — four gold eight, off the tablet, still owed. And the offer stands: when she's spent, my arm goes in the black up to the shoulder for every shaft in that pool and I don't charge the chest for the swim. There'll be ten of them down there by then. They keep throwing their money at us and diving for it and throwing it again." And then the part he wants said while there are five of them to hear it, because he is the one they keep telling to write it down: "Five names on the line that nobody lights the pool. I'm the one who's had two fingers in that black in the road ruts west for two days, three reports, and I'll say it once more so it's in the same page as the rest: *it is not blood, it is not tar, and it does not dry.* It's the same black. It runs out of this room and into a road that carts use. That is the thing the duke's clerk needs in his box, and it matters more than her hoard and more than her fifth account. So somebody lives to say it. That's the job now. She lights her own floor with ten of her own standing in it, and not one of us gave her the spark, and I'll copy that in whatever hand you like — Voss, two Ss, company thief, fourteen months. Put it under Damaris's and under Coss's and under both of yours." His back goes on the stone. His heel is on dry rock for the third round running and he has said so every time. He does not look round the corner at the dragon. Under his breath, to the case at his hip with another man's initials scratched inside the lid, and not for anyone: "Ottry. You went off a wall being clever. I'm behind one."

Lammet withdraws across dry stone and reaches Coss fully behind the west passage wall. He is outside Sootmurk’s prepared cone and remains at 7/10 hp. Guard 2’s spear lies directly across his path, so he scoops it up without losing enough movement to leave himself exposed; it is carried but not readied. He makes no attack. The straight passage and threshold are now empty.

Sootmurk sees the final shadow vanish behind stone, but the breath is already gathered and pride will not let her swallow it. “Then begin with an empty line,” she says, and releases. A cone of boiling black grease crashes through the open iron doorway and fills the straight north passage from wall to wall. It strikes nobody: all five company members are fully behind the side walls, and no saving throws are required. One of Sootmurk’s three daily breaths is expended; two remain. The breath is scalding grease, not flame. It does not ignite the grotto pool or the grease coating the passage.

The fire goes down an empty corridor, and Una counts the cost of it out loud, because that is what the number was for. "Nothing. Five people, no saves, no burns. That's the first entry in this room that goes in the black." Then her hand comes off the wall and onto the man beside her, and she does not wait to be asked, because the arithmetic changed the instant the cone emptied. **Action: cast *Cure Light Wounds* on Coss Braddock.** He is at my shoulder, fully behind the west wall, out of the doorway line — I do not step into the straight, I do not lean out, and I do not put one boot in the grease. Palm flat on the gorget above the plate seam where guard 1 opened him, holy symbol out of the collar, the whole of the word. That spell is spent when the referee says it's spent, and I want the figure written wherever Lammet keeps the tablet. "Coss first, and here's why, said once and plainly so nobody thinks it was sentiment or apology. Seven off him and three off Lammet. My spell is worth two to seven and it does not carry the remainder anywhere. Into Coss, every point of it lands. Into Lammet, four of it falls on the floor. And Coss is the corner. Ten wet things have to come round stone one at a time and meet sixty pounds of plate, and the plate has eight hit points behind it, and that is the whole fight from here. Lammet — you asked for this a round early and I said no, and now I'm doing it and it's not because you asked. It's because he came off the threshold when he was told and he is out of the cone. *Get out of the fire, then bleed, then I pay.* I paid. That's the order kept, not broken. And you are third when there's a second spell, and there is no second spell today, so you get linen and a knot and my hands, and you'll have both the moment there's a lull. Sit down for it when there is one." She keeps her voice at debit-reading level, and she does not look round the corner, because there is nothing round the corner that changes what she has already been told. "Now the part that matters more than my one spell, and it's for Verity, because it's hers to say. *She has two breaths left.* One went into an empty line. Two remain, and each one of them fills that straight passage wall to wall and there is nothing in my book, nobody's book, that answers it. Which means: **nobody stands in the straight. Not for a shot, not for a look, not to be brave, not once.** We fight at the two corners or we do not fight. Anything that comes round the stone is a gloop with four hit points meeting iron, and that trade we win all day. Anything standing in the middle of that corridor when she rears is a corpse and I will not be able to reach it. And the floor of that passage is now covered in boiling fat. Mind your feet at the corner, all of you — it will be slick when it cools and it will take the skin off a hand you put down. Coss, that's for you especially, coming round in plate. Verity. My last spell of the morning is in the door and the book is empty and the thief and the door are both carrying wounds and she has two more of those. Say the word and I'll hold this corner with a mace until it's over, and I'll not argue in front of the company. But I'm the one who keeps the ledger, so I'll read the balance once: we have taken nothing off her, we cannot reach her, and the thing the duke's clerk actually needs is already in Lammet's head and his two fingers — *it is the same black, it comes out of this room, and it runs into a road that carts use.* That's the asset. It doesn't need a dead dragon attached to it, and it does need somebody breathing to carry it up a corridor. The hoard will still be under her next month. The road will not stop running black either way. Five names and nobody lit the pool. She lit her own doorway with ten of her own standing in it and it didn't even catch. Write that exactly, and put my name where it's been since the doors opened." And to Coss, quietly, while the warmth goes in under her hand and the seam knits ugly the way it always does: "You were fourth this morning. You're not today. Don't say anything about it."

Coss Braddock comes back 7.

Cure Light Wounds rolls 1d6+1: 6+1 = 7 hp. The full amount restores Coss from 8/15 to 15/15 hp, already applied. Una remains behind the west wall and spends Cure Light Wounds. Correction to her count: Protection from Evil remains memorised and unspent.

Verity stays where the stone is. **Action: hold position. Verity remains fully behind the east wall of the north passage — not one inch into the straight, no lean, no look round the corner. Sword in hand, shield square across the corridor mouth on my side, feet off the cooling fat. I make no attack: nothing is reachable from behind this wall, and the only way to reach anything is to stand in the place she has two more of those for. I do not spend the turn buying a swing at four hit points with my whole body.** Then she says the thing a captain has to say out loud, at reading-a-contract level, because the company keeps the record or keeps nothing. "Balance, once, and then the order. **Column one, theirs.** Three rounds. Twenty-eight, thirty actions out of ten guards and a captain and a dragon. What they have to show: seven off Coss, healed; three off Lammet, standing; one spear of mine in the grease at four gold eight. Their captain is under her back legs pleading. Nine of them are unarmed or holding a spear they've thrown twice. One breath of three spent into an empty corridor. **Column two, ours.** We have taken *nothing* off Sootmurk. Not a point. Damaris is empty. Una is down to Protection from Evil. Lammet is carrying a wound and a borrowed spear. And she has two breaths left, each one of which fills the only line that leads to her, wall to wall, with nothing in anybody's book that answers it. That second column is not a fight we are losing. It's a fight we cannot *win*, and those are different words and I'll not blur them. Ten wet things coming round two corners one at a time — that we win all day, and I'd stand here all day to do it, except that grinding four-hit-point gloops off Coss's shield earns us exactly nothing while the thing with the hoard sits ten feet back in her own bath waiting for us to get bored and step into the straight. She doesn't have to come to us. That's the whole of it. **A chokepoint only works on something that wants through it.** She doesn't want through it. She wants us in it. So. My plan was doors and a chokepoint and I said it out loud twice so it would stop sounding clever, and it has stopped sounding clever, and here is the correction at the same volume as the plan: **We are leaving. Now, in order, on dry stone, nobody in the straight.** Order of going, and it is not negotiable and it is not brave: **Damaris first** — book, empty, eight hit points, worth more up the corridor with the fifth account in her hand than she is worth here with a dagger. **Lammet second** — you're the one carrying the thing the duke's clerk actually needs. *It is not blood, it is not tar, it does not dry, it comes out of this room, and it runs into a road that carts use.* That is the asset. It does not need a dead dragon attached to it. Go and be alive with it. **Una third** — your work happens after, and there is going to be an after, and it happens where you are, not where we are. **Coss and I are the last two out.** He goes first in the round, I go last in it — which means whatever she does, she does it before my feet move and I get to answer it. That is the correct use of coming last, and it's the only advantage I've had all morning. Coss holds the west corner, I hold the east, we fall back a corner at a time and neither of us is in the middle of that passage when she rears. Coss — you had *go home* ready for the fourth day. It's the third. You don't have to say it; I said it. Nobody argues about it in front of the pool and nobody argues about it up the corridor either, and if anyone wants to argue about it in Threeoaks with the tablet on the table, I'll sit for that all night. Lammet — four gold eight stays on the tablet and stays owed, and your arm does not go in that black for it. Not today. Not while she's got two breaths and ten spears to fish back out. Iron is four gold eight. You're not. And the last of it, so it's said in this room with five of us breathing to hear it, and I'll read it aloud before I put my name to it: **Five names on the line that nobody lights the pool. Nobody did.** She lit her own doorway with ten of her own standing in it, and it didn't even catch, and she is welcome to that entry in her own account. Ours reads: eleven days contracted, three days in, one dragon located and measured, her breath counted at three, her guard counted at ten and disarmed, her captain broken at five hit points and hiding under her, and the black in the west road ruts traced to the room it comes out of. **Five out, five back.** That is a report the duke's clerk can put in a box, and I am going to stand in front of him and say the gloops and the road are separate work and I will not be embarrassed about asking, and if he pays for it there's eight hundred instead of six. She'll still be under this hill next month. She'll be under it with a company of ten, two contracts, and a plan that isn't a door." She sets her shoulder to the stone, sword low, shield across the gap, and does not look at the dragon — and finds she is doing the arithmetic anyway. *Nine barrels valued at eighty, sold for thirty-one. Every account of a dragon dying has more names in it than I have.* "Move, Damaris. Corridor. Don't wait to be told twice."

Verity holds fully behind the east wall with sword and shield ready. She neither enters the straight passage nor attacks, so Sootmurk has no line to her. Her withdrawal order is heard, but it does not move the other company members during Verity’s turn; the retreat is not yet complete.

Gullian remains broken. He surfaces behind Sootmurk’s rear legs, points toward the empty doorway, and insists that his strategy has driven the company out. He does not approach the passage or attack.

Coss counts the order before he moves anything, because the order is the whole of it. Him, then Damaris, then ten gloops, then Lammet, then her, then Una, then Verity. That means every one of the four people who are supposed to be leaving gets their turn *after* his. If he spends this turn walking up the corridor he is a man in plate doing twenty feet a round with three people trying to get past him in a four-foot passage, and the last one out becomes whoever is slowest instead of whoever chose it. That is not a withdrawal. That is a queue. So he does not go. **Action: Coss holds the west corner. He stays fully behind the west wall of the north passage, at the corner mouth — shield square across the west corridor mouth, sword low and ready, not one inch of him in the straight, no lean, no look round the stone. He does not enter the passage line, he does not step onto the cooling fat, he does not pursue anything into the grease. He makes no attack: there is nothing reachable from behind this wall, and the only place a swing exists is the place she has two more breaths for.** **He readies for one thing and one thing only: anything that comes round the west stone onto dry rock meets sixty pounds of plate and a sword before it gets past him.** Una and Lammet go out behind him — behind, not past the corner. Damaris and Verity are the east wall's problem and Verity has the east wall. Then he says it once, flat, at bill-reading level, over the pauldron and up the corridor: "Verity. Your order's right and I'm keeping it, and I'm keeping it by standing still. I'm last out with you, so I'm last out *now* — I don't get to be last out later by shuffling up a corridor in front of the people I'm supposed to be behind. Damaris, Lammet, Una: you go on your own turns, all three of you, this round, past my shoulder and up the west side. Nobody stops to be polite. Nobody steps into the straight to overtake. There's boiling fat wall to wall in that passage and it'll be slick as tallow when it cools and it'll take the skin off a hand you put down — go on your feet, keep a hand off the floor, and if you must touch stone, touch the side wall. I'll come when there's nobody behind me. That's not bravery, it's the arithmetic. I'm the only one of five wearing three feet of iron in a room that throws spears; I'm the cheapest thing to leave at the back and the dearest thing to have in front of you, and Una's just made me worth fifteen again, so use it while it's paid for. Una — I said I'd have taken the Cure in the cone and it's as well you didn't offer. You spent it on the door after the door got behind stone, which is exactly the order you said you'd keep, and you kept it, and I want it in the record in my hand as well as Lammet's: the cleric was right twice in one fight and both times against the whole company's opinion. That's the entry. Nothing else about it." — and he leaves it there, because she told him not to say anything and he has said the least he could get away with. "Lammet. Put the spear down or carry it, I don't care, but your arm does not go in that black today and I'll stand on the wrist of any man who tries it. Four gold eight is four gold eight. There is no figure I could write for the other thing and you know it because I've had you write mine. Damaris — east side, book on the far arm, and you keep saying the numbers up the corridor where somebody can hear them." And then the thing he had loaded for the fourth day, and it comes out shorter than he planned, because Verity said it first and he is not going to make her say it twice: "For the record: I had *go home* ready. I've had it ready since the doors ground open and I was going to put it in front of everyone on the fourth day in one sentence. The captain said it on the third and she said it better, with the balance read out, and she took the correction on her own plan in front of all five of us. I've nothing to add and I'll not have it argued at the pool or in the passage. Threeoaks, tablet on the table, all night if anyone wants it — and I'll be arguing about Verity's share and a half, not about this. Nothing of ours in the pot. Five names, nobody lit it, she burned her own doorway with ten of her own standing in it and it didn't even catch. Write it exactly that way. **Nobody comes out past me. Move — I'm not going anywhere until you have.**" He puts his shoulder on the stone at the corner, shield across the gap, and does not look round it at the dragon. He counts instead, because counting is what he does with the eleven minutes he isn't spending: four of eleven walked out at Fenn, and Verity carried his gear for nine days on that road, and today the number is five out of five and he is standing where a man stands to keep it that way.

Coss holds the west corner at 15/15 hp, fully behind stone, and makes no attack. He blocks the west-side route to Una and Lammet. His ready stance does not bank an out-of-turn attack; anything reaching him before his next turn may engage him, but cannot pass through his position freely.

Damaris is already moving before Verity finishes the sentence, because she was told once and once is the arrangement. But she says the figure on the way, because she is the one who says the figures, and this one is the only one that matters and nobody has said it out loud yet. "Forty feet. That's what I do in a round. Forty, running, and she has two more of those, and the referee's own words were *fills the straight north passage from wall to wall*. Not the first ten feet of it. The whole line. So the passage is not an exit, it's the cone with a floor, and the question is not whether I'm brave enough to run up it — I am, it costs me nothing to be brave about a corridor — the question is how long it is. If it's forty feet to the bend, I'm out and so is everyone behind me. If it's ninety, then the third person in the queue is standing in the middle of it when she rears, and it will be Una or Lammet, and I will have led them into it." **Action: move. Damaris goes north up the passage, out from behind the east wall and up the east side, shoulder brushing stone, hand on the *side wall* and never on the floor — the fat is cooling and it takes skin. Full move, 40 feet, running, no pauses, no looking back at the doorway. Spellbook under the left arm in the oiled wrap, on the wall side of her body, one copy. Dagger stays sheathed. No spell: the book is empty and has been since round two. No tinder, this round or any round.** **Her single condition, and she states it as the arithmetic and not as cowardice, because she would rather the referee ruled it than she guessed it: she runs for the first corner, bend, side opening, alcove, or door she can put stone between herself and that grotto with. If there is such cover within her 40 feet, she is behind it and out of the cone at the end of this turn and she calls the distance back down the passage so the other four know the number before they spend their turns. If the referee's map has no cover inside 40 feet — if the straight runs longer than one round of a magic-user's legs — then she does not end her turn standing in the middle of a killing line with eight hit points and the company's only spellbook. She stops, comes back to the east corner she started from, and holds there, and says so out loud.** "Verity — that's not me refusing the order. That's me executing it with the one number you don't have and I do. You said nobody stands in the straight, not for a shot, not for a look, not to be brave, not once. A woman *walking* up it for two rounds is standing in it, she's just standing in it slowly. If the corridor is longer than a move, then the withdrawal isn't a queue up the passage — it's two corners, one at a time, in the round *after* she spends a breath, not before. She has two. That means two rounds in this fight where the line is safe, and they are the two rounds immediately after each breath, and we should be spending those and no others. That is the whole plan and it is four words: **go on her exhale.** And if the bend is inside forty feet, I'll be round it before the gloops have finished fishing, and I'll say the figure back down the stone so Una and Lammet walk it knowing it and not hoping it." She goes. Book on the inside arm, hand on the wall, feet quick and short on grease-slick flag, and she does not look at the dragon, and she says the last of it to the stone going past her face because somebody should get it into the air while there are still five of them: "Five names on the line that nobody lights the pool. Nobody did. She lit her own doorway with ten of her own standing in it and it did not even catch — that goes in the fifth account and it is the first line of it that is hers and not ours. Nine, twelve, six, and a company. Ours is going to read *five*, and then *five* again, and that is the only entry on that wine list I ever wanted to write."

The known north route reaches a stone bend 30 feet from the side-wall shelter. Damaris crosses the grease-slick straight without falling, rounds that bend, and uses her remaining movement to clear it. She ends fully behind stone, outside any cone from the grotto, at 8/8 hp with her wrapped spellbook. Her call carries back: “Thirty feet—stone.”

Guard 1 sees no target in the north line and will not leave the pool for dry stone. It dives beside the doorway, recovers guard 5’s fallen spear from the grease, and passes it back while retaining its own weapon. It makes no attack; guard 5 is armed again.

Guard 10 also refuses the dry passage. It dives where Verity’s missed spear sank, feels through the black grease, and surfaces with the six-foot ash shaft. Recovering and readying it take the guard’s action. It makes no attack and is armed with Verity’s spear.

Guard 2 cannot recover the spear Lammet carried away and sees no exposed target. It swims to five feet inside the north threshold and submerges beneath the grease, poised to hop if anyone returns. It does not enter the dry passage or attack.

Guard 3, still unarmed, joins guard 2 beneath the grease five feet inside the north threshold. It watches the empty passage for anyone returning but will not cross onto dry stone. It makes no attack.

Guard 4 reaches from the pool across the threshold, hooks its spear where it skidded onto the passage stones, and drags the shaft back into the grease. Recovering and readying it take the guard’s action. It remains in the pool, armed, and makes no attack.

Guard 5 swims into the second rank ten feet inside the north threshold, spear levelled behind the submerged guards. No company member is visible, so it cannot throw or hop. It remains in the pool and makes no attack.

Guard 6 hears Damaris’s distant call but sees only the empty grease-coated passage. It joins guard 5 ten feet inside the doorway with its spear ready, keeping the pool between itself and the retreat. It makes no attack.

Guard 7 takes position beside guards 5 and 6 in the spear rank ten feet inside the north doorway. It keeps the grease under it and watches the empty passage. With no visible target, it makes no attack.

Guard 8 reaches over the threshold for the spear it drove past Coss earlier. It drags the weapon back into the pool and passes it to guard 3, retaining guard 3’s recovered spear for itself. Both guards are now armed; guard 8 makes no attack.

Guard 9 joins the armed rank ten feet inside the doorway, remaining chest-deep in the grease. The straight passage is empty and everyone still near it is behind stone, so guard 9 makes no attack.

**"Thirty feet—stone."** Lammet says the number back up the passage before he moves a boot, because a number said twice is a number nobody has to guess at. Then he does the arithmetic on himself, out loud, because he is the one who is about to be in the middle of it. "Damaris does forty and she used ten of it to get *round* the bend. I do thirty. Thirty gets me *to* the stone. It does not obviously get me *behind* it. And she throws next — she has thrown after me every round of this fight and she will throw after me in this one." **Action: Lammet drops the borrowed spear.** It goes flat on the dry stone at Coss's heel, not into the grease, where anyone who wants it later can pick it up. Empty hands, sling in the belt, pocket empty, tool case cinched high on the hip so it does not swing. "Coss. That's guard two's iron on the flags by your foot. Four gold eight is four gold eight and I am not carrying six feet of ash up a slick corridor to save the chest a coin. And note it for the tablet: **guard ten is holding the captain's spear now** — Verity's spear, fished out of the black. It's off the tablet. It's theirs. Nobody goes in that pool for it, me least of all, and I'm the one who offered, so I'm the one withdrawing the offer." **Action: move — Lammet runs north up the straight passage, full movement, 30 feet, following Damaris's exact line: up the east side, shoulder brushing the side wall, hand on the *wall* and never on the floor, short quick steps on the cooling fat. No attack. No stone in the air. No pause, no look back at the doorway, no lean out into the pool line.** **And here is the one thing I want ruled and not guessed, and I'd rather be told than be clever about it:** thirty feet is exactly the figure Damaris called to the bend. **If my full move puts me fully behind that stone — even flat, even scraping, even with my heels in the corner — then I am behind it and I call the crossing back down the passage.** *If thirty feet leaves any part of me standing in the straight when my turn ends, then I do not spend my turn there.* I take the wall back. I come back flat behind the west-side shelter at Coss's shoulder, no boot in the grease, and I hold — and I say the reason at full volume so it's in the record as mine and not as somebody having to drag me: "**The passage is a one-round crossing for forty-foot legs and a two-round crossing for thirty.** Damaris cleared it because she's quick and empty-handed and lucky in that order. Me, Una, Coss in three feet of iron — we are all *slower than the corridor is long*. Which means the withdrawal is not a queue and it is not a run. It's what Damaris said in four words and everybody should have written down: **go on her exhale.** She has two. Each one fills that line wall to wall. There is no round where a thirty-foot man is safe in the middle of it *except* the round after she's spent one — and she will not spend one on an empty corridor twice, she's proud, not stupid. So one of two things happens: either she never breathes again and we walk out one corner at a time on cold turns, or she breathes at somebody's back and the rest go through the second she's done. If it's the second one — Verity, Coss, Una, hear me now while there are five of us: **it is not going to be Coss.** He's fifteen and iron and he's the corner. It's whichever of us is in the line when she rears, and on the order of turns that's *me*, every round, because I go and then she goes. I know that. I'm not asking anybody to change the order and I'm not standing in the straight to prove I'm not asking. I'm saying it so that when it happens nobody stands still wondering whether it was a mistake. **It was the arithmetic.** Somebody had to be the one who moves last before the thing that breathes." He goes up the east wall with his hand on the stone and his eyes on Damaris's footprints in the fat, and he does the only clever thing he allows himself all round: **a chalk stroke on the side wall at the bend as he reaches it, waist height, one line.** Fourteen inches of white on black grease. "Mark's on the wall at thirty. Coss — that's your stopping point, not a guess, not a shout. When you come, you come to the chalk and then you're out of it. Same for you, Una. **Touch the wall, not the floor.** It'll take the skin off a palm and I'd rather Una's hands stayed hands. And the last of it, once, and then I'll shut up and be a man in a corridor: **Five names on the line that nobody lights the pool. Nobody did.** She burned her own doorway with ten of her own standing in it and it did not even catch, and that is *her* entry, not ours. Ours reads: it is not blood, it is not tar, it does not dry, it comes out of *this* room, and it runs into a road that carts use. Three reports, two fingers, two days. It goes in the duke's clerk's box with or without a dead dragon attached to it. Voss. Two Ss. Company thief. Fourteen months. Put it under all four of theirs and don't abbreviate it." And to the scratched case at his hip, quiet, going past the chalk mark with his hand on the wall: "Ottry. Second man out, on the order, on my feet, hands empty. That's how it's supposed to look."

Thirty feet reaches the bend but does not carry Lammet around it; five more feet are required to put his whole body behind the next stone. His stated condition therefore stops him before he leaves cover. He remains at 7/10 hp behind the west-side shelter, makes no attack, and draws no line from the grotto. Guard 2’s spear is now lying on dry stone at Coss’s heel. No chalk mark is made at the distant bend.

Sootmurk does not waste a second breath on an empty passage or leave her grease to pursue. Instead she fixes on the west corner where Coss, Lammet, and Una have been answering one another and speaks one soft word into the straight. “Your account omitted my voice.” She casts *Sleep*, centred on the dry passage between the two side shelters. Its 40-foot diameter reaches around both near corners. The spell affects 2d8 = 3 Hit Dice; the lowest-HD creature is Coss at 2 HD, and the remaining 1 HD is insufficient to affect anyone else. Coss’s sword strikes stone and he slumps asleep in his plate at the west corner. He is unharmed and will sleep for 4d4 = 11 turns unless someone wakes him. Lammet, Una, and Verity remain awake. Sootmurk stays in the pool; no breath is spent, leaving two.

The sword goes off the stone with a noise Una will hear for a week, and sixty pounds of plate folds at the corner, and she is on her knees beside it before the echo is finished. She does not spend one breath on being surprised. She reads the new entry instead, once, flat, at debit-reading level, because everybody at both corners needs the number in the same words. "**Forty-foot diameter. It came round both corners.** Hear that and stop believing the thing we've all been saying for three rounds. The stone stops her *breath*. It does not stop her *voice*. She has spells, she doesn't need the line, and she just took the strongest man in this company off the board without spending a breath or leaving her bath. She has two breaths *and a spellbook*, and the corners are not cover any more. They are a shorter cone." **Action: Una wakes Coss.** Both hands on him where he lies, fully behind the west wall — knees on dry stone, not one boot in the straight, no lean, no look round the corner. Helm strap loose, palm hard across the cheek twice, thumb into the pressure of the jaw, and his own name shouted into the ear at the volume she used at Wale for men who had been drinking for a burial. Shake at the gorget, not at the wound; the seam is knit but it is new. **No spell. No mace. No attack. I do not drag him into the passage line and I do not roll him toward the pool.** **If the referee rules that waking a slept man is the whole of my action, then that is the whole of my action and I want it written that I chose it.** If it is quicker than that — if he comes up on a slap — **then I spend what's left of my twenty feet hauling him by the pauldron *back* along the west wall, away from the doorway, never across the straight, and I take the skin off my own palms on the fat before I put his face in it.** "And say the reason out loud, because there'll be an argument in Threeoaks about it and I'd rather it be argued off the record I wrote: A sleeping man in plate at the mouth of that corner is not a corner. He's a *table*. Ten spears in that pool have spent two rounds refusing dry stone because there was iron standing on it — take the iron off its feet and every one of them will find the courage it hasn't had all morning, and they will not need to hit an armour class, because you don't roll to hit a man who's asleep. That is not seven hit points off him. That is all fifteen and then his boots. So no, Verity. **Nobody carries him.** Fifteen stone of man and metal is two people's whole round, and it puts both of them lying down in the straight when she next opens her mouth. He walks out on his own feet or the withdrawal stops until he does. Eleven turns is not a wait we have. Waking him is one round of mine and it is the cheapest fifteen hit points anyone will buy today." Then the part she has been doing the arithmetic on since Damaris called the figure, and she says it because she is the one who keeps the book and the book does not get to leave her name out of it. "Now the number none of you have said, and I'll say it about myself so nobody has to be delicate. **Damaris does forty. Lammet does thirty. Coss and I do twenty.** Thirty feet to the bend and five more to be behind it. Lammet needs two rounds. **Coss and I need two, and the second one ends with us still in the line.** Whatever *go on her exhale* buys, it does not buy the two of us a crossing. There is no round in this fight where the slow half of this company is safe in that corridor, and I am not going to stand here and let four people plan around a figure that isn't true. Which means one of three things, and Verity picks, and I'll not argue it in front of the pool: One — **Damaris and Lammet go now and keep going.** Book and thief, out, up, gone, and they do not turn round for anything, and the report walks out of this hill whatever happens at this corner. That is the asset and it is already in their legs. Two — **Coss and I take the passage in two rounds and eat whatever she does in the middle of it**, and she is welcome to it; I have chain and a shield and a save, and he has fifteen and plate, and we are the two who can afford to be in a cone if anyone can. Three — we sit at these corners and she picks us off one word at a time without spending a thing, which is what she has just proved she can do, and that one is not a plan, it's a queue for the same door. I say one, then two. Book and thief out first, and the slow ones walk it after, on her exhale, and if it costs the pair of us we are the pair it's cheapest to spend. That's not brave. **It's the same arithmetic I do every morning and it never comes out comfortable.**" She gets a hand under the gorget and shakes him again, harder, and says it down at the helm where only he would hear it if he were awake to. "Coss Braddock. Get up. You said nobody comes out past you and I've got two people who still have to." And then, to Verity, without looking round the corner: "Five out, five back. I've not scratched that yet."

Waking a creature from *Sleep* takes Una’s full action, as it did when the guards woke their fellows. Her slaps and hard shaking break the spell immediately. Coss wakes at 15/15 hp behind the west wall, conscious but still down in his plate with his sword on the stone; his round-four turn has already passed, so he cannot rise or move until his next turn. Una remains beside him on dry stone and neither drags him nor attacks. *Protection from Evil* remains memorised.

Verity does the new arithmetic before she moves a boot, and she does it out loud, because the company has watched her be wrong once already this morning and she is not going to be quietly wrong the second time. "Una's right and Una's number is the one that matters. **Damaris does forty. Lammet does thirty. Coss, Una and I do twenty.** Thirty to the bend and five to clear it. That is three of us who cannot cross that passage in one round no matter how brave we are about it, and I am one of the three, and I am *last in the order*, which means every round of this fight she acts before my feet finish moving. There is no round where I walk that straight and she doesn't get to answer it. And the corners are finished as cover. She didn't need the line. She said one word round the stone and took sixty pounds of plate off its feet without spending a breath or leaving her bath. Two breaths and a book, and stone that stops the fire and not the voice. Sitting at these corners is not a plan, it's a queue for the same door — Una said that too, and she's right twice in a morning again, and I'll say so at the same volume I said the plan. So we stop waiting behind stone that doesn't work, and we go and take the one piece of iron in this hill that does. **The doors.**" She is already moving as she says it, and she says the rest of it flat, reading-a-contract level, so that nobody has to guess what she is attempting or what she is refusing. **Action: Verity goes to the north doorway along the *east* side, hugging the wall, and puts her weight into the east iron leaf to swing it shut across the gap. STR 16, shoulder and hip, one dedicated action, no attack.** **And the condition, stated before the dice and not after, because I would rather be ruled than be clever:** I go behind the leaf and I stay behind the leaf. **The iron stays between me and the pool.** I do not step into the open gap, I do not stand in the threshold, I do not lean past the edge to see what's in the grease, and not one boot goes in the black. **If the referee rules the leaf cannot be shifted from the passage side without me standing in the open doorway line — or that it will not move at all for one person's round — then I do not step into the line to try it.** I abandon the attempt on the spot and spend what's left of the move getting back flat behind the east wall, sword up, and I say so out loud. The wall beats the door; the door only beats the wall if I can shut it from behind cover. "Here's why it's worth my whole round and why it's mine and not anyone else's, and then nobody argues it at the pool. That leaf is the only thing in this room that answers *both* of her weapons. Stone stops the cone and not the word. **Iron in the frame stops the cone, and it stops her seeing forty feet of dry corridor to drop a Sleep into, and it stops her hearing which corner is talking.** Shut that gap and the straight goes cold. A cold straight is a two-round crossing for twenty-foot legs and nobody dies in the middle of it. Ten wet things then have to haul an iron door open and come through it one at a time onto dry stone at two corners — which is the only fight in this hill we win, and this time we're the ones on the outside of the funnel with the corridor at our backs. Coss couldn't kick it shut coming backwards with a gloop hanging off his boss. Nobody could. It wants somebody's whole turn, and it wants the one of us at nineteen out of nineteen with the best armour in the company and nothing else useful to do with the round. That's me. Not Coss on the floor, not Una with her hands full of him, not the thief at seven, not the book. **It is not brave and I'll not have it written as brave. It is the cheapest body for the job and it happens to be the captain's.**" Then the orders, over the shoulder, moving, and she does not look at the dragon. "**Damaris — you are round the bend and you stay round the bend. You do not come back for anybody, you do not lean out to count us, you go on up the known route and you keep saying the numbers.** The book and the fifth account walk out of this hill whatever happens at this doorway. That is not sentiment, that's the asset, and it's already in your legs. **Coss — you're awake. First thing on your turn: get up and get up *behind stone*. Not one inch into the straight, not a swing at anything, not the corner-holding.** You held the west corner for me last round and it was the right call and it got you slept, and that's my account to carry, not yours. **When the gap is iron, you and Una go, together, on your feet, twenty and twenty, chalk-line and round the bend.** If the gap is still open you hold west and nobody stands in the middle of that corridor for any reason. **Lammet — you're thirty and you stopped short on your own condition, and that was correct and I want it in the record as correct.** Empty hands, no stone in the air. **The moment that leaf is in the frame you go, and you don't stop at the bend, you go past it to Damaris.** Your two fingers and your three reports are the thing the duke's clerk actually needs, and it is worth more than her hoard, and it needs a live man attached to it. **Una — Coss walks out on his own feet, exactly as you said, and you walk out beside him, and nobody carries anybody.** Protection from Evil stays in your hands. Your work is after, and there is going to be an after. For the tablet: **guard ten is holding my spear.** Four gold eight, entered honestly, and it stays entered and it stays theirs. Nobody's arm goes in that pool for it — Lammet withdrew the offer himself and I'm holding him to it. And the last of it, said in this room while five of us are breathing, because we keep the record or we keep nothing: **five names on the line that nobody lights the pool, and nobody did.** She spent a breath on an empty corridor and a spell on a sleeping man behind a wall, and she has not taken one point off this company that Una hasn't already paid back. She's welcome to write it however she likes in the fifth account. Ours reads: dragon located and measured, breath counted at three and one wasted, spells confirmed, ten guards disarmed and refusing dry stone, captain broken at five and hiding under her back legs, and the black in the west road traced to the room it comes out of. **Five out, five back.** Then eight hundred instead of six, ten people, two contracts, and a plan that isn't a door — and the next time it will be a door I close first." She sets her shoulder against three hundred pounds of cold iron with the leaf between her and everything in that grotto, and she does not look round the edge of it, and she heaves. *Nine barrels valued at eighty, sold for thirty-one.* She has never once been able to stop the number arriving. She just does not let it decide anything. "Coss. Up. Una, with him. Move on your own turns."

The east leaf is accessible from the passage side; Coss’s earlier failure was weight and timing, not reach. With a dedicated action and STR 16, Verity can move it without exposing herself. The hinges groan and the east iron leaf swings into its centre stop while she stays behind its face, never entering the pool’s line. It is one leaf of a pair. The west leaf remains fully open, leaving half the doorway clear. Verity ends at 19/19 hp behind the closed east leaf, but the north doorway is not yet sealed: Sootmurk still has a line through the west half for breath or another spell. Closing the west leaf will require another action.

Gullian remains broken at 5/12 hp. The grinding iron makes him flinch beneath Sootmurk’s rear legs; he points at the half-open doorway and orders the guards to hold it while making no move toward it himself. He neither attacks nor leaves Sootmurk’s cover.

Coss comes up out of the grease with his ears still ringing and the first thing he does is count, because counting is the only thing he did with the eleven turns he didn't spend. He went down without being touched. Not a point of damage, not a spear, not a claw. A word round a corner and sixty pounds of plate on the flags, and Una Ferris spent her whole round slapping him awake instead of doing any of the eight more useful things she keeps in her hands. That is an entry and it is his to pay. And the order says: **him first, Verity last.** Verity got one leaf into its stop with her whole turn and she is fifteen bodies away from getting a hand on the other one. Sootmurk moves before Verity does. Half a doorway is a whole doorway to a thing that only needs to see forty feet of dry corridor to say one word into it. The west leaf is on the west side. He is the west side. **Action: Coss rises and shuts the west leaf.** He gets up off the west-wall stone — hand on the *wall*, never the floor, the fat will take a palm off — and goes along the west face of the passage to the north doorway, shoulder low, and puts STR 17 and the whole weight of the plate into the west iron leaf to swing it into the centre stop against Verity's. **And the condition, stated before the dice, because I'd rather be ruled than be clever, and Verity and Lammet both wrote theirs and were right to:** **The iron stays between me and the pool. I go behind the leaf's face and I stay behind it.** Not one boot in the black, not one inch of me standing in the open gap, no lean past the edge, no look into the grotto, no swing at anything in the grease — including anything submerged five feet inside the threshold, and I know there are two of them lying under it waiting for exactly that. **I am not there to fight. I am there to be a hinge.** **If the referee rules the west leaf cannot be moved from the passage side without me standing in the open doorway line — or that rising in plate is the whole of my round and there is nothing left in it — then I do not step into the line and I do not spend a round I haven't got.** In that case: I am up, on my feet, flat behind the west wall, shield across the west corner mouth, sword in hand, no attack, and I say so out loud. **Whatever's left of my move goes backwards up the west wall, never across the straight.** Rising beats reaching. Iron in the frame beats both, if it can be had from behind cover. Then he says it, flat, at bill-reading level, and short, because there are four people who need their turns more than they need his voice. "Verity. Your call and it's the right one and I'm finishing it, not amending it. You had the east leaf, I've got the west, and it's mine because I'm *first in the round* and you're *last* — the door wants shutting before she opens her mouth, and there's only one of us who acts before she does. Same arithmetic that kept me at the corner last round. It's the only advantage I've got and it's worth more than my sword arm today. Una. Two things and then I'll not mention it again. One: you spent your round on a man who was already fifteen out of fifteen and you got nothing for it but him standing up, and it was still the cheapest purchase anybody made this morning, and that is *three* times in one fight that you were right against the whole company's opinion. Cure held. Cure spent. Corners aren't cover. Put all three in the record in my hand as well as yours. Two: you said Coss walks out on his own feet. He is walking. **Nobody carries me and nobody stops for me.** If she says that word again and I go down in the open with iron on me, the order is that you leave me and you go, and I'm saying it now while I'm awake so nobody has to decide it while I'm not. I'd rather be a man asleep in a passage they came back for on the twelfth turn than four names in a room. Lammet — that's guard two's iron still on the flags at the west wall, and it stays there, and your arm stays out of the pool. Guard ten's got the captain's spear. Four gold eight, theirs, entered, closed. Damaris — you're round the bend and you stay round the bend. Thirty feet and a stone. Don't come back to count us. The book walks out of this hill whatever happens in this doorway; that's not sentiment, that's the asset, and it's the only line in the whole account that's already safe. And for anyone who wants it written: **the man who says go home didn't have to say it.** The captain said it first, on the third day, with the balance read out and her own plan corrected in front of all five of us, and I've nothing to add and I'll not have it argued at the pool. Threeoaks, tablet on the table — and what I'll be arguing there is the share and a half, because a company that pays its captain what it pays its newest thief loses its captain to whoever pays properly, and I've watched that happen to better outfits than this one. Five out, five back. That's the only number I'm counting and I've been counting the other one for four years." He sets his shoulder to three hundred pounds of cold iron with the leaf between him and every wet thing in that bath, and he does not look round the edge of it, and he heaves — and thinks, because he cannot stop it either: *eleven walked in at Fenn and four walked out, and Verity carried my gear for nine days, and today nobody carries anybody.* "Move on your own turns. I'm the door."

Rising costs part of Coss’s movement, not his whole action. He takes up his sword, reaches the adjacent west leaf along the sheltered wall, and puts STR 17 and his plated shoulder into it. The leaf grinds shut while remaining between him and the pool; he never enters the exposed line and makes no attack. The two iron leaves meet in the centre with a heavy clang. Coss ends upright at 15/15 hp on the passage side. The doors are closed but not barred. Sootmurk does not leave her grease to pursue, Gullian remains broken beneath her, and the guards will not cross the dry passage. With the company entirely north of the doors and no pursuit following, the fight is over.